Unanimous Vote by Rep. Assembly sends TA and MOU to membership for final vote

Below is a copy of the email sent by President Jan O'Reilly to the membership though district email. You should have a copy in your email inbox. Notice that Jan posted the message at 8:56PM. A president's day is never done. To find out more details of the TA and MOU go to the VTA website, www.vistata.org. At the website is a photo copy of the original signed document. http://www.vistata.org/tamoa2010.html

The vote at the emergency Representative Assembly meeting yesterday was unanimous. Send the TAs and MOUs to the membership for a vote for approval of our new contract. There was no dissent. No one abstained. The relatively short meeting ended on wild Rep Assembly applause for Jan O'Reilly and our VTA Bargaining Team. It was truly a great victory for education in VUSD. How awful if huge class sizes had become a permanent part of our contract! Thank you Jan and Team for saving our students from that fate.

The TAs are Tentative Agreements which if approved both by a vote of the membership of the Vista Teacher's Association and the Vista Unified School Board will become permanent changes in the contract between the VTA and VUSD.

The MOUs are Memorandum of Understanding. These MOUs are only TEMPORARY. The MOUs will be end on July 1, 2013. The MOUs have to do with increases in class size and in decreases in number of days teachers will teach and will be paid for.

Nice to have the class size increases TEMPORARY rather than permanently enshrined in the contract. Having them as a MOU instead of a TA accomplishes that noble goal. Good job, Jan, Bargaining team, and to all the teachers that wore black and participated in Work to Rule. Your efforts made a major impression on those who needed to be impressed.

Joyce Bales was scared. So many teachers wearing black. She felt you guys might really would do what Capistrano and Oakland teachers did in April, go on strike.

With large numbers of teachers participating in "Work To Rule" job action and the huge number of teachers wearing black, she finally believed the teachers of our district were serious. She was so concerned that there would be a strike that she convened an emergency meeting of all site administration to discuss plans for dealing with a strike.

Sadly not all good news, the five furlough days in the MOUs means a 2.7% cut in pay for every teacher in the district. Bad. But not as bad as the original proposal of a full five percent cut in pay. Also much better than many other districts in California where teachers were forced into as much as a ten percent cut as well as class size increases and benefits cuts and increases in teacher contributions (San Juan Capistrano).

Never forget it who did this to you and all California public education. It was our local Republicans in the Sacramento who are cheering for this cut in your pay. They and they alone bear direct responsibility for your pay cuts and the budget mess in Sacramento.

By using the evil two thirds requirement and voting in lockstep, with no dissent allowed by the party bosses, they made sure that there would be no equitable or rational fixes to the California Budget Crisis.

There were plenty of easy solutions including reinstating recently reduced taxes on the wealthy (Reductions demanded by Sacramento Repubs), a Sarah Palin type tax on California oil production among other easy painless fixes. Read more about pain free fixes to our California Budget Crisis here.


You can also see for yourself what our local Sacramento Republicans gleefully did to you, California education, and our California neighbors who happen to be poor, disabled, or elderly here and here.

For your voting edification, the list of our local Sacramento villains:
(1) Martin Garrick (R) 74th Assembly (Carlsbad, Oceanside, Vista, San Marcos),
(2)Nathan Fletcher (R) 75th Assembly (Escondido, Poway),
(3) Diane Harkey (R) 73rd Assembly (Oceanside, San Clemente) and
(4)Mark Wyland (R) 38th (Oceanside to Bonsall, San Clemente to Solana Beach).

For more information on the TAs and MOUs, please plan to attend one of the five VTA meetings scheduled to explain them. See the reproduced email below for dates and times. Note VMMS gym is the Vista Magnet Middle School gym for old times that was Lincoln Middle School. TH MPR is the Temple Heights Multi Purpose Room.

Congratulations to all for a very successful "almost" resolved contract. The new contract will finally be approved when the vote of the membership and the official school board vote is taken. Special Thanks to the VTA Bargaining Team for their many many many long hours of work on this contract. We should all be very proud of their efforts.






Sent: Tuesday, June 01, 2010 8:56 PM

Colleagues:

As you know on Thursday, May 27th, your VTA negotiating team and VUSD management team met and reached a tentative agreement (TA) with a memorandum of understanding (MOU). The VTA Executive Board voted unanimously to send the proposal the Rep Council for approval. The Rep Council voted unanimously on Tuesday night to send the proposal to the membership for a vote next week.

The TA, MOU, current contract, and a powerpoint presentation will be posted on www.vistata.org late Tuesday evening. We encourage all members to thoroughly read and discuss the proposal with colleagues over the next week. Additionally, we have set up member informational meetings to answer any questions you may have. The schedule is as follows:

*Wednesday, June 2nd VMMS gym 3-4:30 & 4:30-6 PM

*Thursday, June 3rd TH MPR 3-4:30 & 4:30-6 PM

*Friday, June 4th VTA office 4-5:30 PM

Many schools will hold lunchtime meetings with site reps to answer your questions as well. Please let your VTA Rep(s) know if such a meeting would be helpful for your site so they can set it up in the next few days. Our reps are there to help you navigate the complicated language of the proposal.

Please be reminded that voting on the tentative agreement and memorandum of understanding will commence June 9th and end June 14th at 4 PM. Again, we recognize this is a tight timeline but feel it is important to have closure prior to the end of the school year.

Stay Active. Stay Informed.

Respectfully,

Jan O' Reilly
VTA President